Robert A.m. Stern

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When she wears it, she says, the only people who see her are Tinsley Mortimer and Marjorie Gubelmann. Meanwhile, this past weekend boldfaced names like Gwyneth Paltrow and Peter Cook feigned invisibility — but you would have seen them if you were there. Because in the Hamptons, there's nowhere to hide.

We've been intrigued by the spectacularly luxurious residential building at 15 Central Park West for quite some time now. And we have some questions. For example, sure, Daniel Loeb may have plunked down $45 million on one of the penthouses, and Sandy Weill may have dropped $42 million on the other one, but what about the rest of the building? You know, the apartments that aren't duplexes with terraces and the ones that aren't occupied by people like Sting and Trudie Styler. Who lives there and shares the pool and the "motor court" with Sandy and Danny? Thankfully, New York's genius real-estate reporter, S. Jhoanna Robledo, wrangled her way into the building (they'd never let us in; Chris is too fat, and Jessica wears white after Labor Day) and brought back video from the inside. Click above to see a fabulous three-bedroom, including herringbone hardwood floors and a bathroom so amazing that, if you were in a hotel, you would totally use the wall phone to call your mom and tell her how fancy it was, while sitting on the toilet.
Inside 15 Central Park West

Developer Larry Silverstein says his new deal to build a Four Seasons hotel and condo tower downtown will help steer lower Manhattan through the banking industry's crisis, but not everyone in his circle is matching his strut. At a civic-alliance breakfast this morning, Silverstein presented his plan to replace the stately former Moody's headquarters, up Church Street from the Woolworth Building, with a 912-foot stone tower by 2011, creating the city's tallest residential building. The building's design is by neoclassicist Robert A.M. Stern, who worked up 15 Central Park West — which, Silverstein crowed, "broke all records for sales." But this morning, after some lukewarm talk about assisting in the rebirth of lower Manhattan "in a way that I'm comfortable with," Stern betrayed some major butterflies. "I never thought when I was growing up in New York that I'd get to design a building taller than the Woolworth Building," he told us. "That makes for sleepless nights and exciting mornings — I'm like a guy on the Titanic, and I just hope we don't crash." —Alec Appelbaum

A brand-new storefront is coming to the Upper West Side and — get this — it's not a chain store. Starchitect Robert A.M. Stern this afternoon unveiled his redesign of the Kaufman Center, a music school born in 1952 as a Jewish art school and installed in a modernist structure back when the area was scruffy. The natty neoclassicist presented plans for a “vivid fire-red granite” two-story lobby and glazed-glass exterior to make the 67th Street façade glow at night — all the better to stand up to hulking Victoria's Secret next door, on the corner of Broadway. (Click here for a larger version of the rendering.) Like the more avant-garde firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro, which is redesigning neighboring Lincoln Center by leveling that forbidding plaza, Stern tells us he’s “tweaking” a modernist façade to draw passersby in a neighborhood that’s gone domestic. “A lot of new buildings around here are bunkers,” he told us. Indeed. An example: the soon-to-be-completed 15 Central Park West, that pile of limestone and columns just down the block. Who designed that? Oh, yeah: Robert A.M. Stern. —Alec AppelbaumPREV1NEXT